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COMMUNITYPSYCHUK  January 2004

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Subject:

[Compsychwaikato] Fw: piece by Arundhati Roy] <fwd>

From:

annie mitchell <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

The UK Community Psychology Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 28 Jan 2004 12:33:05 +0000

Content-Type:

TEXT/PLAIN

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Parts/Attachments

TEXT/PLAIN (516 lines)

Dear all,
Many of you may be interested in this - the World Social 
Forum seems an exciting social/political 
development - and did you know that the European Social 
Forum this year, controversially, is to be in London ( the 
last was in Paris).
Annie   --- Begin Forwarded Message ---
Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 21:03:53 +1300
From: Libby Gawith and Paul Wynands <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [Compsychwaikato] Fw: piece by Arundhati Roy]
Sender: Libby Gawith and Paul Wynands <[log in to unmask]>
To: 'Community Psychology Email' 
<[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To: Libby Gawith and Paul Wynands 
<[log in to unmask]>
Message-ID: <006001c3e575$4604a630$fc8c60cb@thefastcar>


Dear Aall
Read on - essential reading


----- Original Message -----
From: "Heather Gridley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: "libby & paul" <[log in to unmask]>; "Colleen Turner"
<[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, January 28, 2004 2:44 AM
Subject: [Fwd: piece by Arundhati Roy]


> Hard to sleep after reading this one!
>
> xH
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> From: Marion Oke <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: piece by Arundhati Roy
> CC: [log in to unmask]
>
> The Nation
>
> The New American Century
> by ARUNDHATI ROY
>
> http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040209&s=roy
>
> [from the February 9, 2004 issue]
>
> In January 2003 thousands of us from across the world gathered in Porto
> Alegre in Brazil and declared--reiterated--that "Another World Is
> Possible." A few thousand miles north, in Washington, George W. Bush and
> his aides were thinking the same thing.
>
> Our project was the World Social Forum. Theirs--to further what many
> call
> the Project for the New American Century.
>
> In the great cities of Europe and America, where a few years ago these
> things would only have been whispered, now people are openly talking
> about
> the good side of imperialism and the need for a strong empire to police
> an
> unruly world. The new missionaries want order at the cost of justice.
> Discipline at the cost of dignity. And ascendancy at any price.
> Occasionally some of us are invited to "debate" the issue on "neutral"
> platforms provided by the corporate media. Debating imperialism is a bit
> like debating the pros and cons of rape. What can we say? That we really
> miss it?
>
> In any case, New Imperialism is already upon us. It's a remodeled,
> streamlined version of what we once knew. For the first time in history,
> a
> single empire with an arsenal of weapons that could obliterate the world
> in
> an afternoon has complete, unipolar, economic and military hegemony. It
> uses different weapons to break open different markets. There isn't a
> country on God's earth that is not caught in the cross-hairs of the
> American cruise missile and the IMF checkbook. Argentina's the model if
> you
> want to be the poster boy of neoliberal capitalism, Iraq if you're the
> black sheep. Poor countries that are geopolitically of strategic value
> to
> Empire, or have a "market" of any size, or infrastructure that can be
> privatized, or, God forbid, natural resources of value--oil, gold,
> diamonds, cobalt, coal--must do as they're told or become military
> targets.
> Those with the greatest reserves of natural wealth are most at risk.
> Unless
> they surrender their resources willingly to the corporate machine, civil
> unrest will be fomented or war will be waged.
>
> In this new age of empire, when nothing is as it appears to be,
> executives
> of concerned companies are allowed to influence foreign policy
> decisions.
> The Center for Public Integrity in Washington found that at least nine
> out
> of the thirty members of the Bush Administration's Defense Policy Board
> were connected to companies that were awarded military contracts for $76
> billion between 2001 and 2002. George Shultz, former Secretary of State,
> was chairman of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. He is also on
> the
> board of directors of the Bechtel Group. When asked about a conflict of
> interest in the case of war in Iraq he said, "I don't know that Bechtel
> would particularly benefit from it. But if there's work to be done,
> Bechtel
> is the type of company that could do it. But nobody looks at it as
> something you benefit from." In April 2003, Bechtel signed a $680
> million
> contract for reconstruction.
>
> This brutal blueprint has been used over and over again across Latin
> America, in Africa and in Central and Southeast Asia. It has cost
> millions
> of lives. It goes without saying that every war Empire wages becomes a
> Just
> War. This, in large part, is due to the role of the corporate media.
> It's
> important to understand that the corporate media don't just support the
> neoliberal project. They are the neoliberal project. This is not a moral
> position they have chosen to take; it's structural. It's intrinsic to
> the
> economics of how the mass media work.
>
> Most nations have adequately hideous family secrets. So it isn't often
> necessary for the media to lie. It's all in the editing--what's
> emphasized
> and what's ignored. Say, for example, India was chosen as the target for
> a
> righteous war. The fact that about 80,000 people have been killed in
> Kashmir since 1989, most of them Muslim, most of them by Indian security
> forces (making the average death toll about 6,000 a year); the fact that
> in
> February and March of 2002 more than 2,000 Muslims were murdered on the
> streets of Gujarat, that women were gang-raped and children were burned
> alive and 150,000 driven from their homes while the police and
> administration watched and sometimes actively participated; the fact
> that
> no one has been punished for these crimes and the government that
> oversaw
> them was re-elected...all of this would make perfect headlines in
> international newspapers in the run-up to war.
>
> Next thing we know, our cities will be leveled by cruise missiles, our
> villages fenced in with razor wire, US soldiers will patrol our streets,
> and Narendra Modi, Pravin Togadia or any of our popular bigots will,
> like
> Saddam Hussein, be in US custody having their hair checked for lice and
> the
> fillings in their teeth examined on prime-time TV.
>
> But as long as our "markets" are open, as long as corporations like
> Enron,
> Bechtel, Halliburton and Arthur Andersen are given a free hand to take
> over
> our infrastructure and take away our jobs, our "democratically elected"
> leaders can fearlessly blur the lines between democracy, majoritarianism
> and fascism.
>
> Our government's craven willingness to abandon India's proud tradition
> of
> being non-aligned, its rush to fight its way to the head of the queue of
> the Completely Aligned (the fashionable phrase is "natural ally"--India,
> Israel and the United States are "natural allies"), has given it the leg
> room to turn into a repressive regime without compromising its
> legitimacy.
>
> A government's victims are not only those it kills and imprisons. Those
> who
> are displaced and dispossessed and sentenced to a lifetime of starvation
> and deprivation must count among them too. Millions of people have been
> dispossessed by "development" projects. In the past fifty-five years,
> big
> dams alone have displaced between 33 million and 55 million in India.
> They
> have no recourse to justice. In the past two years there have been a
> series
> of incidents in which police have opened fire on peaceful protesters,
> most
> of them Adivasi and Dalit. When it comes to the poor, and in particular
> Dalit and Adivasi communities, they get killed for encroaching on forest
> land, and killed when they're trying to protect forest land from
> encroachments--by dams, mines, steel plants and other "development"
> projects. In almost every instance in which the police opened fire, the
> government's strategy has been to say the firing was provoked by an act
> of
> violence. Those who have been fired upon are immediately called
> militants.
>
> Across the country, thousands of innocent people, including minors, have
> been arrested under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and are being held
> in
> jail indefinitely and without trial. In the era of the War against
> Terror,
> poverty is being slyly conflated with terrorism. In the era of corporate
> globalization, poverty is a crime. Protesting against further
> impoverishment is terrorism. And now our Supreme Court says that going
> on
> strike is a crime. Criticizing the court is a crime too, of course.
> They're
> sealing the exits.
>
> Like Old Imperialism, New Imperialism relies for its success on a
> network
> of agents--corrupt local elites who service Empire. We all know the
> sordid
> story of Enron in India. The then-Maharashtra government signed a power
> purchase agreement that gave Enron profits that amounted to 60 percent
> of
> India's entire rural development budget. A single American company was
> guaranteed a profit equivalent to funds for infrastructural development
> for
> about 500 million people!
>
> Unlike in the old days, the New Imperialist doesn't need to trudge
> around
> the tropics risking malaria or diarrhea or early death. New Imperialism
> can
> be conducted on e-mail. The vulgar, hands-on racism of Old Imperialism
> is
> outdated. The cornerstone of New Imperialism is New Racism.
>
> The best allegory for New Racism is the tradition of "turkey pardoning"
> in
> the United States. Every year since 1947, the National Turkey Federation
> has presented the US President with a turkey for Thanksgiving. Every
> year,
> in a show of ceremonial magnanimity, the President spares that
> particular
> bird (and eats another one). After receiving the presidential pardon,
> the
> Chosen One is sent to Frying Pan Park in Virginia to live out its
> natural
> life. The rest of the 50 million turkeys raised for Thanksgiving are
> slaughtered and eaten on Thanksgiving Day. ConAgra Foods, the company
> that
> has won the Presidential Turkey contract, says it trains the lucky birds
> to
> be sociable, to interact with dignitaries, school children and the
> press.
> (Soon they'll even speak English!)
>
> That's how New Racism in the corporate era works. A few carefully bred
> turkeys--the local elites of various countries, a community of wealthy
> immigrants, investment bankers, the occasional Colin Powell or
> Condoleezza
> Rice, some singers, some writers (like myself)--are given absolution and
> a
> pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are
> evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections
> cut,
> and die of AIDS. Basically they're for the pot. But the Fortunate Fowls
> in
> Frying Pan Park are doing fine. Some of them even work for the IMF and
> the
> WTO--so who can accuse those organizations of being antiturkey? Some
> serve
> as board members on the Turkey Choosing Committee--so who can say that
> turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it! Who can say
> the
> poor are anti-corporate globalization? There's a stampede to get into
> Frying Pan Park. So what if most perish on the way?
>
> As part of the project of New Racism we also have New Genocide. New
> Genocide in this new era of economic interdependence can be facilitated
> by
> economic sanctions. New Genocide means creating conditions that lead to
> mass death without actually going out and killing people. Denis
> Halliday,
> who was the UN humanitarian coordinator in Iraq between 1997 and 1998
> (after which he resigned in disgust), used the term genocide to describe
> the sanctions in Iraq. In Iraq the sanctions outdid Saddam Hussein's
> best
> efforts by claiming more than half a million children's lives.
>
> In the new era, apartheid as formal policy is antiquated and
> unnecessary.
> International instruments of trade and finance oversee a complex system
> of
> multilateral trade laws and financial agreements that keep the poor in
> their bantustans anyway. Its whole purpose is to institutionalize
> inequity.
> Why else would it be that the US taxes a garment made by a Bangladeshi
> manufacturer twenty times more than a garment made in Britain? Why else
> would it be that countries that grow cocoa beans, like the Ivory Coast
> and
> Ghana, are taxed out of the market if they try to turn it into
> chocolate?
> Why else would it be that countries that grow 90 percent of the world's
> cocoa beans produce only 5 percent of the world's chocolate? Why else
> would
> it be that rich countries that spend over a billion dollars a day on
> subsidies to farmers demand that poor countries like India withdraw all
> agricultural subsidies, including subsidized electricity? Why else would
> it
> be that after having been plundered by colonizing regimes for more than
> half a century, former colonies are steeped in debt to those same
> regimes
> and repay them some $382 billion a year?
>
> For all these reasons, the derailing of trade agreements at Cancún was
> crucial for us. Though our governments try to take the credit, we know
> that
> it was the result of years of struggle by many millions of people in
> many,
> many countries. What Cancún taught us is that in order to inflict real
> damage and force radical change, it is vital for local resistance
> movements
> to make international alliances. From Cancún we learned the importance
> of
> >globalizing resistance.
>
> No individual nation can stand up to the project of corporate
> globalization
> on its own. Time and again we have seen that when it comes to the
> neoliberal project, the heroes of our times are suddenly diminished.
> Extraordinary, charismatic men, giants in the opposition, when they
> seize
> power and become heads of state, are rendered powerless on the global
> stage. I'm thinking here of President Lula of Brazil. Lula was the hero
> of
> the World Social Forum last year. This year he's busy implementing IMF
> guidelines, reducing pension benefits and purging radicals from the
> Workers' Party. I'm thinking also of the former president of South
> Africa,
> Nelson Mandela. Within two years of taking office in 1994, his
> government
> genuflected with hardly a caveat to the Market God. It instituted a
> massive
> program of privatization and structural adjustment that has left
> millions
> of people homeless, jobless and without water and electricity.
>
> Why does this happen? There's little point in beating our breasts and
> feeling betrayed. Lula and Mandela are, by any reckoning, magnificent
> men.
> But the moment they cross the floor from the opposition into government
> they become hostage to a spectrum of threats--most malevolent among them
> the threat of capital flight, which can destroy any government
> overnight.
> To imagine that a leader's personal charisma and a c.v. of struggle will
> dent the corporate cartel is to have no understanding of how capitalism
> works or, for that matter, how power works. Radical change cannot be
> negotiated by governments; it can only be enforced by people.
>
> At the World Social Forum some of the best minds in the world come
> together
> to exchange ideas about what is happening around us. These conversations
> refine our vision of the kind of world we're fighting for. It is a vital
> process that must not be undermined. However, if all our energies are
> diverted into this process at the cost of real political action, then
> the
> WSF, which has played such a crucial role in the movement for global
> justice, runs the risk of becoming an asset to our enemies. What we need
> to
> discuss urgently is strategies of resistance. We need to aim at real
> targets, wage real battles and inflict real damage. Gandhi's salt march
> was
> not just political theater. When, in a simple act of defiance, thousands
> of
> Indians marched to the sea and made their own salt, they broke the salt
> tax
> laws. It was a direct strike at the economic underpinning of the British
> Empire. It was real. While our movement has won some important
> victories,
> we must not allow nonviolent resistance to atrophy into ineffectual,
> feel-good, political theater. It is a very precious weapon that must be
> constantly honed and reimagined. It cannot be allowed to become a mere
> spectacle, a photo opportunity for the media.
>
> It was wonderful that on February 15 last year, in a spectacular display
> of
> public morality, 10 million people on five continents marched against
> the
> war on Iraq. It was wonderful, but it was not enough. February 15 was a
> weekend. Nobody had to so much as miss a day of work. Holiday protests
> don't stop wars. George Bush knows that. The confidence with which he
> disregarded overwhelming public opinion should be a lesson to us all.
> Bush
> believes that Iraq can be occupied and colonized as Afghanistan has
> been,
> as Tibet has been, as Chechnya is being, as East Timor once was and
> Palestine still is. He thinks that all he has to do is hunker down and
> wait
> until a crisis-driven media, having picked this crisis to the bone,
> drops
> it and moves on. Soon the carcass will slip off the bestseller charts,
> and
> all of us outraged folks will lose interest. Or so he hopes.
>
> This movement of ours needs a major, global victory. It's not good
> enough
> to be right. Sometimes, if only in order to test our resolve, it's
> important to win something. In order to win something, we need to agree
> on
> something. That something does not need to be an overarching preordained
> ideology into which we force-fit our delightfully factious,
> argumentative
> selves. It does not need to be an unquestioning allegiance to one or
> another form of resistance to the exclusion of everything else. It could
> be
> a minimum agenda.
>
> If all of us are indeed against imperialism and against the project of
> neoliberalism, then let's turn our gaze on Iraq. Iraq is the inevitable
> culmination of both. Plenty of antiwar activists have retreated in
> confusion since the capture of Saddam Hussein. Isn't the world better
> off
> without Saddam Hussein? they ask timidly.
>
> Let's look this thing in the eye once and for all. To applaud the US
> Army's
> capture of Saddam Hussein, and therefore in retrospect justify its
> invasion
> and occupation of Iraq, is like deifying Jack the Ripper for
> disemboweling
> the Boston Strangler. And that after a quarter-century partnership in
> which
> the Ripping and Strangling was a joint enterprise. It's an in-house
> quarrel. They're business partners who fell out over a dirty deal.
> Jack's
> the CEO.
>
> So if we are against imperialism, shall we agree that we are against the
> US
> occupation and that we believe the United States must withdraw from Iraq
> and pay reparations to the Iraqi people for the damage that the war has
> inflicted?
>
> How do we begin to mount our resistance? Let's start with something
> really
> small. The issue is not about supporting the resistance in Iraq against
> the
> occupation or discussing who exactly constitutes the resistance. (Are
> they
> old killer Baathists, are they Islamic fundamentalists?)
>
> We have to become the global resistance to the occupation.
>
> Our resistance has to begin with a refusal to accept the legitimacy of
> the
> US occupation of Iraq. It means acting to make it materially impossible
> for
> Empire to achieve its aims. It means soldiers should refuse to fight,
> reservists should refuse to serve, workers should refuse to load ships
> and
> aircraft with weapons. It certainly means that in countries like India
> and
> Pakistan we must block the US government's plans to have Indian and
> Pakistani soldiers sent to Iraq to clean up after them.
>
> I suggest we choose by some means two of the major corporations that are
> profiting from the destruction of Iraq. We could then list every project
> they are involved in. We could locate their offices in every city and
> every
> country across the world. We could go after them. We could shut them
> down.
> It's a question of bringing our collective wisdom and experience of past
> struggles to bear on a single target. It's a question of the desire to
> win.
>
>
> The Project for the New American Century seeks to perpetuate inequity
> and
> establish American hegemony at any price, even if it's apocalyptic. The
> World Social Forum demands justice and survival.
>
> For these reasons, we must consider ourselves at war.
>
>
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
> To visit your group on the web, go to:
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nowar_sydney/
>
> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
>  [log in to unmask]
>
> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
>  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/


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Annie Mitchell
Lecturer in Psychology,
Clinical Director, Doctorate in Clinical and Community Psychology,

School of Psychology,
Washington Singer Building,
University of Exeter,
Exeter,
EX4 4QG

Phone 01392 264621 or 
Liz Mears, Programme Administrator 01392 403184

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